


Ants & Burrs

by cowboykylux



Category: BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Genre: Depression, Early Days, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feelings, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Light Angst, References to Depression, Tenderness, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25836478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboykylux/pseuds/cowboykylux
Summary: Flip finds you in an awfully sad mood, and he tries his best to help you out of it.
Relationships: Flip Zimmerman/Reader, Flip Zimmerman/You
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	Ants & Burrs

He’s just on his way to go pick you up after his shift at work, when he spots you all the way down the sidewalk. It’s a sweltering hot day in the bright sunshine of early August, and you tend to avoid being caught in the rays when the temperatures rise into the nineties, so Flip is surprised to see you. Surprised, but never in a bad way – nothing about you is ever bad, not to Flip.

“(Y/N!) Hey!” He cups his hands around his mouth so that his voice echoes down the not-too-busy residential street, not that he needs it with how booming of a baritone he’s gotten.

You stop in your tracks and turn around quickly at the call, and Flip’s heart speeds up a little as he half jogs, half runs to catch up to where you’re standing there waiting for him. He takes the sight of you in happily; your pretty hair in the sun, the dress that flutters gently in the very slight breeze, the --

“You okay?” He asks immediately when he sees the wet shine to your eyes, the downward turn of your mouth, the wobble of your chin.

“No, not really.” You surprise him by answering; normally you’re nothing but sunshine.

Panic spikes through him, hard. He looks around immediately, looks to see if anyone else was around who might have hurt you, might have caused you to be upset like this. He’s your boyfriend, he would protect you from anyone and anything.

“It’s not – I’m okay, I’m just sad.” You explain, not wanting him to get all worked up the way he does.

You sound entirely too defeated, the kind of sad that sits right on your chest and doesn’t let up. Flip knows it, he’s felt it, but he’s never seen it on you, not like this.

“Can I walk with you?” He asks, wondering even where you were headed, why you were all alone. He doesn’t like the thought of you all alone, not that you can’t take care of yourself of course but…but well he works at the station now, and he knows the dangers of the city.

“I’m afraid I’m not much company right now.” You give him those pretty eyes of yours, apologetic and so sad, and he only doubles down on his sincerity, on his wanting to be with you.

“Can I walk with you anyway?” He offers you his arm, and you take it with a nod.

He lets you lead the way, his feet following where yours take them, until you wind up at the little park around the block that’s for the neighborhood kids. It’s got a playground area and a sandbox, picnic tables and benches and a little pond to feed the ducks; Flip’s taken you here often for lunches on the grass under the shade of the sweet gum trees.

“I don’t have too many memories of my great-grandma.” He says when for once, you’re the uncharacteristically quiet one between the two of them. He’s walking with you on a little paved path through those trees now. “But one I do have, is once when I was really little, we’d walk around just like this, and she’d pick up these dried up burrs.”

He stops, and you stop, the both of you looking at a whole bunch of them that’ve been brushed off the path and onto the grass. He picks one up by the stem, the little brown seed pod looking dangerous and angry just by nature of all those spikes around it.

“Mhm.” You encourage, a little divot between your brows as you try to follow where he’s going with this.

“I remember saying that I didn’t want to touch them because they were filled with spikes.” He faces you with it, offers it to you as he says, “And she offered me one, and put it in the palm of my hand, and asked if it hurt.”

“Does it?” You whisper then, even though your eyes grow wide and Flip can see the trust in them, the trust you have for him.

“Nope.” He whispers back with a reassuring smile, and you nod. He places it in your palm just as his great-grandma did for him a lifetime ago, and he smiles again at your surprised expression. “She looked at me and told me that things aren’t as painful as we think they might be. If we’re gentle, we can avoid a lot of sorrow. And then she closed my hand around it and it stung a little before she opened my hand again, and she said that even when things _do_ hurt, it’s only for a short time.”

He closes your hand around it then, just ever so slightly, not enough to really hurt, but enough to get the point across. You flinch, but only for a moment, the two of you looking down at your closed hand around the burr.

“I didn’t really get it then, but I do now.” Flip finishes the story, hoping that you understand it too, hoping that it helps in some way, even though he doesn’t really know what’s wrong.

You’re quiet for a while, and Flip can feel his heart in his throat, can feel it beating because all he ever wants is for you to be happy, for you to feel nothing but carefree and at peace and filled with laughter the way you always are.

He knows that's not realistic, he knows that life is a bitch for everyone, but some protective possessive thing inside of him wants desperately to keep the pain of the world away from you. He knows that there are things in your life he’ll never be able to fix, or to undo, or to take back – but he tries, wants so badly to help you through them, and to help keep more bad at bay.

You sigh then, and when you look up at him there’s big fat tears in your eyes, tears that slip over your cheeks and leave tracks as they drip down from the slope of your perfect chin. You sniff up your sinuses and your throat tightens when you clench your hand down a little harder.

“What do you do if you try to be gentle but the hurt finds you anyway? And it’s just as painful as you think it’s gonna be – maybe even more?” You sound so tired, it makes Flip panic again because something big must’ve happened to get you so worn down, something big but he doesn’t know what, and then all of a sudden you’re shaking your head, deeply sighing, trying to get a grip. “Sorry I – sorry, I know I don’t usually cry like this.”

“You cried last week feeding the ducklings in the park.” Flip points out lightly, trying to brighten your spirits and get you laughing the way that you always do for him.

“Okay but I can’t help that, they’re so darling.” You roll your wet eyes, and he can tell it’s helped, even for just a moment.

A moment that passes too quickly though, and soon that beautiful smile of yours is fading, and the two of you stand underneath the trees in the spotty shade, the sun dappling on your skin.

“I’m hurtin’, Phil.” You whisper, like it’s an admission you hate making, like admitting it at all makes it real, and Flip’s whole chest clenches because he knows that fear.

He doesn’t say it, because he doesn’t know how to say it, but he thinks you’re the bravest person in the entire world, just for admitting it. He pulls you into a sound and secure hug, his body enveloping yours and holding you tight against his chest. You shove your face into the crook of his neck and cry, and he thinks that’s brave too.

“I know ketsl,” He whispers into your hair, kisses your temple in little presses of his lips against your warm skin. “But it’s not gonna stop until you open your hand.”

“I don’t know how to let go of things that make me feel bad, and sometimes I worry that I keep them around because I’ve always carried sadness with me. I don’t know what it feels like to be without it, and I’m afraid of what could fill that feeling instead.” You say, your face still hidden, tears still dampening his shirt.

He hates that he doesn’t really know what to say to that, he hates not having the words to express how fiercely he admires you for your humanity, your vulnerability. It’s something he’s never been able to properly get a grasp on, and yet here you are, in the middle of a park, sobbing into his embrace without even so much as a second thought. He’s not good with things like this, with words, so he just holds you and holds you and holds you some more, lets you get it all out.

“Someone real smart once told me that the worst excuse for doing something is ‘that’s how it’s always been.’” He says softly, and you huff out a small self-deprecating laugh at that, something too familiar to the way he huffs at you. Warmth blooms in his chest when he realizes that you’ve both been picking up little mannerisms from one another, over the years.

“You gotta stop listening to me when I talk.” You shake your head sarcastically, wipe away your tears.

“Did you say somethin’?” Flip asks playfully as he pulls a square of tissue out of the back pocket of his jeans and dabs at your eyes, your cheeks, pinches your nose.

“Flip!” You laugh a little more brightly at that, and he knows that no matter what’s been bothering you, it’ll be okay. You’re so strong, and you’re not alone, you’ll be okay.

He catches sight of something then, and tugs on your hand gently, leads you over to one of the park benches. It looks like someone had been eating potato chips on the bench and dropped a couple, hadn’t bothered to pick them up and toss them in the little garbage bin a few steps away.

“Here, come here, look.” Flip directs your attention to the small line of little black dots on the path right under the bench, “See those ants? Look at them, look how hard they work. I was reading something that says they can lift a hundred times their body weight. They can carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, but sometimes, if they’re lucky, they have someone who loves them to shoulder the weight, because once they reach their destination, it’ll benefit the whole colony. They don’t know any other way to live, besides taking on part of the burden so that everyone can survive.”

He looks at you, and your eyes are a different kind of soft now; you’re feeling better, he can tell just by the way you look.

“So...I’m an ant?” You ask with a watery smile, and he nods immediately.

“If you’re an ant, I’m an ant.” He replies, uncurling your hand around the little burr which has sort of crumpled in your clammy fist. “And I’m here to help you let go of the burrs, or to carry that potato chip wherever you need to take it, no matter how long it takes to get there.”

The both of you watch as you drop the burr to the ground, careful to avoid the ant line, so as to not mess up their marching. You slide your arm around his waist then, resting your head on the safe crook of his shoulder.

“When did you get to be so introspective?” You ask, and you’re back to sounding like the girl he knows and loves, the one he would swim across any ocean for, climb any mountain for, weather any storm for.

“Ever since I started loving you.” That at the very least, comes easy. “You’ve taught me a lot, about life, about myself. You’ve been there for me for everything, and I know I can never really return the favor but I sure can try.”

“Loving you’s not a favor, Phil.” You shake your head and close your eyes, tip your face up to the sun as it comes through strongly between the leaves of the sweet gum tree. “You’re the best thing to ever happen to me.”

One day he’ll figure out how to say it all back, one day. He’ll unlock something in his brain that will make all the words tumble out and suddenly he won’t know what to do with them, he won’t know how to stop telling you how he adores you.

You know all those thoughts anyway, though silent they may be. You know them in his stories and his metaphors, you know them in the way he holds you and kisses you and stays with you through your dark moments, you know them in the way he listens to you, the way he _hears_ you.

He doesn’t know it, but you hear him too.

Just two ants on the sidewalk, shouldering the weight of the burrs, together.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this just now because I was sad lol. Sometimes we all just need to make something soft to vent and let some of our feelings out, don't we? I hope you're all doing well, take extra care of yourselves, try to let go of some burrs you may be holding. Know that I'm sending you all my love.


End file.
